Animals Rights Essay Example

Premised on the moral consideration of animal, more an more people approve of the method that the human can intervene in natural selection to help animals from suffering by means of technologies. People widely believe that human has the abilities and special obligations to help animals away from injuries. Many wildlife conservation organizations adopted the method of interfering with nature to help wildlife and have got successful achievements.

Meanwhile, some scientists and naturalists propose to intervene in the process of natural selection to help animals, because the process of it is hurtful and hurtful for animals. However, not all of the methods of intervening in nature will give animals positive helps. Intervening in natural selection will lead to an adverse effect on animals’ life and suffer them more to a large extent. Humans interventions of natural selection will destroy the rule of ecological circulation, disrupt animals’ ability of living and adapting, and result in the interspecies and intraspecies competition for resources and larger scale of harm.

Initially, human’s intervention in natural selection through technological means for helping one specie will result in the loss of ecological balance. Initially, people do not have enough funds to support the conservation for all of the animals in the world. According to Lan Sample’s study, there is $76.1 billion of dollars required annually to establish and manage protected areas for the species is at risk from habitat loss, hunting and other human activities (Sample, 3). However, there is no that much money as it requires, and about one third of animal conservation centers cannot raise enough money to set up a conserve project. At least 3 thousand animal conservation organizations’ major source of funds are charitable donations and voluntary, but the fund that raised from these activities is far from the amount they actually need.

Besides, the $76.1 bn is only for the conservation of endangered species, which means if people want to protect all of the species from suffering and extinction, more funds are required, and the funds that people put in the animal conservation now is far below the target amount. If people use their money to intervene in natural selection only to help some particular animals such as endangered animals, this will disrupt the natural balance of ecosystems. In the normal cycle of life in nature, every specie is closely connected with other species by the link of food chains, which means any specie’s change will lead to at least one other specie being involved and affected, and further affect more species through the connections. Hence, one unusual change of one animal’s population will cause the damage of the whole ecological balance at the end.

A Real Example

To illustrate with the rabbit population in Australia, before the introduce of rabbits to Australia, Australian local species are able to maintain the balance in there ecosystem. After the rabbits are introduced, their population grows rapidly and becomes the largest population in Australia. 

The huge amount of rabbit population directly influenced almost all of the Australian herbivores populations’ sizes which be represented by field mice (Simonelli, 12). This resulted in the shrink of predator populations such as fox, which made the growth of animal populations ran out of control and the ecological balance damaged. Likewise, if human gives one animal population better survival rate and live chance through interfere with natural selection, this will cause this kind of animal’s population have more advantages over other populations, so that they get the chance to reproduce more and can increase the size of their population infinitely till this population hit the carrying capacity.

When a populations’ growth hit the carrying capacity, it means the ecosystem that this population lives in can no longer provide enough resources for this population to grow. At this time, this population used up all of the resources for developing, which will lead other populations decrease or either extinct, and when the resources run out, the size of this population will also get hit and shrink, and the natural environment is damaged by their crazy growth. The damage of habitat and the disorder of ecosystem will finally cause more animals suffering. Therefore, if human intervenes in natural selection to help particular animals in a situation that human do not have the ability to help all of the species, this will only result in more harm to animals rather than help.

Why Do We Interfere with Natural Selection?

Moreover, humans’ intervene in the process of natural selection will affect the evolution of animals, which will further cause more serious influences. Natural selection is the process that animals are selected and evolve to adapt to their surroundings, species will adapt to the changes of environment through evolution, which is their strategy of surviving. However, doctor Oscar Horta has a different idea of animals evolution. He suggests that the reproductive strategies used by most wild animals lead to immense amounts of suffering. And he says animals are injured as they produce large numbers of offspring whose individual members have very low survival rates and often die at young ages by brutal means such as starvation and predation in his essay (Horta, 26).

He finally proposes that human should intervene in natural selection and to help animals avoid experiencing that process to get away from suffering. It is true that animals will go through overpopulation at first in the process of natural selection, and there will be huge amount of animals are eliminated from this process. However, the purpose of this process is beneficial to the animal populations. One animal population will produce more offspring than the amount of offspring that can become mature, and the ones that are fittest to the environment will survive and pass the beneficial gene to their offspring, which means the process of overpopulation creates the possibility of the occur of an advantage-gene-carrying offspring, and increases the chances for this population to survive.

The genetic diversity that is created in this process is the key factor of the survive of an animal population. Otherwise, if human interfere with this process, it will cause the lack of genetic diversity, which will bring a serious shock to the animal population. Take jubatus (a type of cheetah) as an example, their reproductive strategy results in the occur of disadvantages in their gene pool. They only produce few offspring, and few offspring really can increase the survival rate (Peters, 2). However, few offspring reduced the chance of creating genetic diversity, so when the global climate getting warmer, this population extinct because of there is no offspring that carries a gene which can adapt to the climate change.

This tragedy shows that if human intervene in natural selection to make animals skip this process will easily lead to the lack of diversity in this population. If the animal population cannot produce an offspring that carries the gene that are good enough to adapt the environment, this population will be extinct because the failure in natural competition. That is the thing that will actually cause more injury to animals. In addition, animals that have not experienced natural selection cannot get the ability of adaptation, which means their viability are weaker than other species that survived from natural selection, so that this specie is hard to live independently without the help from human, and they will be excluded by other animals in natural competition. Therefore, humans’ intervene in the process of natural selection will cause animals lose their genetic diversity, which will lead to further more harmful impacts on animals.

The Impact of Such Interference  

Furthermore, human intervene in natural selection will affect the development of animal populations, which will lead to a cruel competition between animals and suffer animals hard. The purpose of human intervention is to make more animals survive, which means people will help those animals that should be eliminated against natural selection to survive. However, along with more animal populations get chances to survive, the consuming and requirements of resources increase, which will cause the shortage of resources. Larger amount of organisms require more resources to support their lives, but the resources are limited. One organism needs food, water, and air as their basic requirements of life, and humans only can provide help on few foods and water, but it is still far from the amount which animal populations need for developing.

The limitation of resources will cause more animals die from starving and competition. In addition, human also do not have the ability to provide anymore living spaces for animal populations, which will also lead to brutal competition because of overlap of habitats. Therefore, even human can use technology means to make more animals survive, human still cannot provide those animal populations enough space and resources to grow, the population will eventually suffer or even extinct from the competition. When the resources become limited, animals are destined to compete with each other for surviving. For example, the competition between England red squirrel and grey squirrel. The relation between red squirrel and grey squirrel is competition, so that they have to compete with each other for more resources.

However, because of grey squirrel has more adapted to the environment, the red squirrel population shrunk under the force of competitive exclusion. Finally, people have to hunt grey squirrel on a large scale and spend a lot to maintain the amount of red squirrel (Hamblin, 7). This event shows the negative consequence of interspecific competition, which same with the situation that there is no more resources and living spaces for the animals should be extinct. Immense amount of requirements of resources is bound to result in a competition that causing lots of injuries. Hence, raising the survival rates of animals through interfere with natural selection is inadvisable, because it will cause serious competition for resources in the later stages, which will lead to more harms to animals.

Conclusion

In conclusion, interfere with natural selection is not the way to save animals, it will bring more suffering to animals instead. Intervening in natural selection will directly affect the survival of animals, which will disturb the natural life cycles of wildlife, influence the variation of species, and lead to greater injury toward animals. While human got gratifying consequences of intervening in nature to help animals, it is not means that intervene in natural selection will also have positive effects on animals’ well-beings. It is important to stop people that are trying to interfere in natural selection, and to invest on another more effective method to help animals. People should spend their goodwill in a correct way, and do not let their kindness hurt the ones that people are trying to protect.